Walter Gilbert

Walter Gilbert is an American biochemist and molecular biologist who, with Allan Maxam, developed the Maxam-Gilbert method, one of the first practical techniques for determining the exact sequence of nucleotides in a strand of DNA. Gilbert also proposed the terms intron and exon to describe the non-coding and coding segments of a gene, contributed to understanding the lac repressor protein that regulates gene expression in bacteria, and was an early and influential advocate of the RNA world hypothesis for the origin of life. He shared the 1980 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Frederick Sanger and Paul Berg for pioneering work in devising methods for determining the sequence of nucleotides in DNA. Gilbert trained originally as a physicist, earning a doctorate in physics from Cambridge University in 1957, before moving into molecular biology at Harvard, where he became professor of biochemistry in 1968 and later held the Carl M. Loeb University Professorship. He was an early advocate for sequencing the complete human genome during the 1980s and co-founded the biotechnology companies Biogen and Myriad Genetics.